Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008
By admin on May 28, 2010, 4:19 am
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Product DescriptionMaximize the Business Intelligence Tools in Microsoft SQL Server 2008Manage, analyze, and distribute enterprise data with help from this expert resource. Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 covers the entire BI lifecycle and explains how to build robust data integration, reporting, and analysis solutions. Real-world examples illustrate all of the powerful BI capabilities of SQL Server 2008. This is your one-stop guide for. . . More >>
Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008
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I have read many books on SQL BI (going back to SQL 2000 OLAP) . This one is by far the best book not only on SQL OLAP and BI, but also on Data Mining and Analytics and Data Warehousing that I have ever read. This book will offer all beginning to intermediate SQL 2008 BI administrators, developers, and managers one of the best explanations of the SQL BI 2008 features, best practices, and implementation processes. Even if you are a seasoned expert, this book will offer insights perhaps you never had.
The chapter 6 alone ranks as perhaps the best chapter on Data Mining and Analytics I have ever read. Chapter 6 ALONE is worth the price of this book.
In other to manage, develop, and utilize SQL 2008 BI, one needs to think differently about data than one thinks about OLTP databases. One needs to understand measures, dimensions, attributes, star schema, and snowflake schema rather than tables and 3 forms of normalizations. Furthermore, ETL and Data Warehousing are exceedingly important to SQL BI.
Data Mining and Analytics is not hard. It is just different and requires understanding of a completely different paradigm. This book very clearly explains that paradigm bette than any other book I know. I also recommend statistical analytics tools such as SAS to complement SQL BI.
Finally, do not neglect MDX. It is the industry standard BI language and I would hesitate to hire any SQL BI person who does not have even rudimentary understanding of MDX. This book covers the rudiments of MDX quite well.
This is the ideal first book on SQL 2008 BI and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5
Content is great, well laid out, explains topics in easy to understand language for the most part.
Big problem with the examples though.
There is a cube project called MaxMinSalesDM. This is created by one VS2010 project. It is populated by another. Problem is the column names in one of the tables are incorrect (in the analysis services project, a table is called SalesPerson, but in the SSIS projects that populate the cube, the table is referenced as Sales_Person. When populating the Slowly changing dimension, this causes an error.
For a beginner, i need to learn by example of these projects, and dont have the knowledge to fix these errors. This has caused me hours of trouble and for this reason, i might just skip this book if you are going to rely on the projects.
Rating: 3 / 5
Great A to Z basics. I especially like that although the book is for MS product, his descriptions of BI concepts aren’t centered around the product. I only wish there was more info on data modelling and the difference between modelling for trans apps and data marts, especially understanding the impact of different Dim and Fact tables on ETL. I’ve used this book to teach BI and always have to create a separate set of materials to go over these pieces.
Rating: 4 / 5
Well-written book tackling an enormous topic. In addition to providing good conceptual overviews, actually goes into a fair bit of practical detail on each of the three main components (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS). Author uses his own database rather than the AdventureWorks sample used by most other books. This is a big plus, the database is very small and the number of tables/entities to contend with is easy to conceptualize. Plus it gets you more involved with the exercises – less chance of ‘sleepwalking’ through a topic because AdventureWorks sometimes makes things seem deceptively familiar.
Maybe surprisingly, the SSAS section is the best part of the book – in particular, the MDX and Data Mining chapters. MDX is a quirky #if incredibly powerful# language, and the examples and diagrams in Chapters 11 and 12 are VERY well thought out and presented. You’ll have to go to other sources to truly master either MDX or Data Mining, but this book contains a fine foundation. I dived straight into both these topics previously, using more ‘advanced’ books, and regretted it.
The final section is around SSRS, to my mind the dullest, most vanilla, part of the MS BI stack. Ploughing through plumbing/security/drudgery is not something I ever find interesting, but even SSRS was made interesting here through examples consuming OLAP and DM. Finally, a cool little bonus hidden away in Chapter 18 showing an example of programming through [. . . ].
I’d highly recommend the book – it’s a comprehensive and practical overview.
Rating: 5 / 5
i had almost no clue what BI was and after reading this book i now see the light
Rating: 5 / 5